Voice
by Sally Mn
Summary: He could hear her in the wind... set in early S3


**Voice**

If he was very still, and very silent, Jim could hear her fading voice in the wind.

Not really a voice, no.

But like so many things Sentinel-wise, there wasn't a word for what he could hear, or feel, or just somehow _know_, so 'voice' had to do. And in the weeks since Sierra Verde, when it was late and quiet, and cold air came westward from wherever the failed and broken sentinel Alex had been taken 'home', that 'voice' told him that she was blindly searching for the way back from wherever the fire-scorched overload of her mind in that ancient temple had sent her.

Blair had been right - again. Alex had _lost_ her way.

There was no fire anymore, there had never really been. The not-quite-sounds in the wind chilled him now like the touch of dying ashes - something like a faltering breath, mixed with the ragged, pallid echo of a jaguar's scream of denial and a trace of blank and distant fear. And jangling at the edge of his mind, there was a fragile touch of icy music; the faint, brittle chords of a piano, the same music he had been hearing, with a Sentinel's impersonal gift, from a radio playing somewhere on the campus the same time as he fought to bring back someone even more lost than Alex Barnes.

Sandburg had been lost in death... then found and pulled back while that piano music played.

Why it was here in this wind - the same music, sharper and thinner and barely there at all - he didn't know. Maybe Alex had heard it as well that day, as she killed and then ran. Maybe it was tied into her dreams of what they'd done, each of them and both of them together, as it was tied into his.

He didn't understand.

He really didn't know her. He didn't _want_ to know, or hear, or sense her any more, or what she was going through trapped in wherever she was. What they'd done both here and in Sierra Verde seemed oddly unreal, like the crumbling pages in a story he'd read a long time ago, about someone else; oddly cold and detached, like a fractured and frightening verse whispered a long way away; oddly wrong, like an out of tune radio playing a broken tune just too far away to hear. He didn't really want to know if she felt that way too - or felt at all, lost as she was.

The _something_ that was a breath changed in the air currents, shaping around a thought that might have been a curse, and died away. He huffed a little - no, no he knew too well she wouldn't feel it, not even if she was still whole. Alex had been going the wrong way far longer than just those few short weeks in Cascade.

And there was no coming back.

And even as he listened, Jim couldn't quite feel sorry for her, or that if someone had made it back, it hadn't been her...

"What's wrong?"

The mumbling, sleep-warmed and oh _so_ real voice made him turn, brought _him_ back.

"Nothing, Sandburg," he said softly. "Go back to bed, it's cold out here."

"Enough with the mom bit, man. I'm fine, I have been all along. Talk to me."

Jim hesitated.

"You're not leaving me again, Jim." His roommate shuffled out and blinked at him drowsily. "Been there, done that..."

"I didn't leave you," Jim said thinly.

"Yeah, you did."

"I made you go..."

"You left before that, and it wasn't your fault, man," Blair shrugged, "or mine, I guess. But we're back, okay?" He gazed up at Jim with opaque eyes. "Both of us, though sometimes I wonder about you."

"I'm okay."

"Mostly, yeah. Both of us are mostly... yeah."

"We just need more time."

"And space?"

"No," Jim shook his head, a little surprised at just how cold that felt. "Not so much space, Sandburg. Space isn't good right now." _Because I need you to be here when the wind and the sounds I can't hear won't go, when Alex... _

"Alex isn't your fault either."

Jim blinked; trust his partner to catch what he hadn't even said aloud. There was a silence, even the wind falling for a moment... and he almost _felt_ the dark, weak rumble of a big cat. Not his cat, either. _Hers._

"She's so far gone, Chief." He forced the words out through cold lips. "And yet... she won't go away. I just..."

Blair, more awake now, spoke carefully, not quite touching him, not quite close enough to touch. "You want her back, Jim?"

"What - no!"

Blair was still not quite close enough, watching him. Blair had been the one Jim _and_ Alex had sent away, and Blair had found his way back, and Jim was _damned_ if he was going to let Blair think...

"No," he said finally. "There's nowhere that is too far away, Chief, not from me or you. I want, I just want..."

_Me back. You back. Us... here._

He shrugged, and held out a hand. "Guess it'll take a while, huh? For everything to come right."

"Speak for yourself." Blair moved closer, letting Jim drape an arm around his shoulders. "I'm fine."

"Sure you are."

"You left me behind for a while there, yeah, and maybe lost me for a while. But hey, I lost me too."

"But we both came back."

"I had help, Jim. Your help."

"And she didn't..." He shivered slightly, as the wind picked up a little, cold against his skin, like dying breaths... and the echo of that music. "Maybe I could have stopped her."

Blair shook his head. "And maybe you'd have gotten lost in the sense overload with her. No one knows, man."

"No one?" He dredged a grin from somewhere... somewhere closer and warmer, and gripped Blair's warm shoulder a little tighter. "And here I've been thinking you knew everything."

"Yeah well, I try."

"Go back to bed, Sandburg." Jim let him go, pushing him gently towards the warmth inside. "I don't want to have to drag you out of bed in the morning, and we're taking that trip into the mountains for the day, remember?"

"I can sleep in the truck."

"You can, can you?"

"Unless you want to, and let me drive."

"Christ no, with your skill at navigating we'd end up..." He stopped.

"Lost?" Blair gave a crooked grin. "For real, this time."

Jim shrugged. "At least we'd be lost _together _this time."

"Which is a better way to _be _lost, man."

"Yeah, Chief," Jim said softly, as he turned away from whatever was in the wind. "Much better..."

**- the end -**


End file.
